Chocolate Peppermint Cookies with Chocolate Glaze

Why I Love This Recipe

Plenty of Peppermint!

My best friend Julie begged my mom to let us bake cookies one day when she was over to my house. I hadn’t done a lot of cooking at age 10, and I certainly never made anything before in the kitchen by myself, but Julie persuaded my mother to let us bake cookies. Julie assured her we could do it all by ourselves! We promised we’d clean up too. My mom agreed to let us alone in the kitchen. In the Betty Crocker Cooky Cookbook we found the perfect recipe, the cream de la cream of cookies, chocolate peppermint cookies. The picture on p. 198 sure looked delicious!

Our recipe called for peppermint extract. Julie and I slowly unscrewed a bottle of peppermint extract and let the delicious aroma of candy canes, Christmas and Wrigley’s peppermint chewing gum waft through the air. We each drew in a delicious whiff of peppermint. “Oh how I love peppermint,” we both exclaimed. “It’s my favorite flavor… don’t you just love the smell? I could smell it all day long. They should make a peppermint perfume. Don’t you think?” we both said. At this point I don’t remember who put the peppermint flavoring in the cookie dough, if it was Julie or I, but I do remember being enamored with the peppermint smell. We must have thought bigger was better or didn’t realize that 1 Tablespoon wasn’t the same thing as 1 teaspoon, as we added a whopping Tablespoon of peppermint extract. Now peppermint extract is okay if you just sniff the bottle, but a whole tablespoon will knock you out, especially if added to a little batch of cookie dough. At the time we hadn’t realized our mistake. We rolled the dough into nearly identical little balls and baked the spheres into lovely chocolate cookies we cooled on wire racks.

Then the moment of truth occurred. We gathered my whole family around our kitchen table and ceremoniously brought out the peppermint cookie masterpieces. We waited for the “oos” and “ahhs” and the compliments to come streaming in about the most delicious cookies they were ever going to have! But to our surprise came the sound of choking and gagging and “mom, help me” “get me a glass of water”, and “what in the world did you girls put in these cookies!” We had been so sure of our careful work we hadn’t even bothered to try our cookies before we served them. We couldn’t believe the comments my family was making about our wonderful cookies. So we quickly each took a bite. Yuck, peppermint - too much peppermint! It was like eating medicine! It gave me a pounding headache! We couldn’t believe what had happened. Julie said she wanted to go home. She called her mom and told her to come quickly to take her home. All I could smell was peppermint, it was everywhere. It was dizzying. The kitchen reeked of peppermint. We couldn’t believe how terrible our cookies had turned out. What had we done? My head ached. We had put way too much peppermint extract in our cookies!

It was a long time before I had peppermint ice cream, candy canes or peppermint after-dinner mints at my family’s favorite restaurant. The strong smell of peppermint seemed to be stuck in my head. But eventually I was able to eat peppermint flavored foods without the reoccurring headache. Eventually I enjoyed pink peppermint ice cream. Eventually I chewed Wrigley’s peppermint gum and enjoyed Andes after dinner mints wrapped in green foil and my favorite Chocolate Mint Girl Scout Cookies. But I’ll never forget my best friend, Julie whenever I smell peppermint.